Some enterprising flight ops personnel found a way to broadcast music on one of the secure FM channels at (unnamed FOB) in Iraq for the pilots on long ground runs to enjoy.

That being said, there's been at least one accident investigation that found a few pilots rigging the cockpit intercom system to play music from either Walkmans or CD players (whatever we had before iPods). Huge trouble, too. It's one thing to listen to the radio while driving to work. It's another thing when you need to listen to the radio (or five or six radios in an aircraft) in order to get that call that saves your life.

Tune-in, turn-on, and drop-out - so the Gunner has discovered some Marines have their head and ass wired for sound while on patrol?

Patrol check-lists should have an SOP for required gear, and obviously needs to include what is forbidden, and enforced - it's called a pre-partol inspection.

I wonder if Chesty Puller were still with us, whether he'd ask the question as to where the bayonet fit on an i-Pod? : )

At 4 guys per HMV (more for MRAPS) that's a lot of bells getting rung. And likely some multiple concussion exposures in a short period, when a bruised brain is most vulnerable. Our high-value NCO's, the guys charged with keeping the 18-20 year olds focussed, are often on their third tour, in this eighth year of trolling for mines.

When the world gets confusing, and the mission is to demonstrate our ability to take a punch without hitting at the people hiding the enemy, a familiar playlist would be a comforting organizing principle.

This is a generation raised on World of Warcraft and Wiis. They expect much from their issued equipment as well as their personal electronics. A few days past you noted how Marines on the ground do not feel anyone is listening when their issued technologies simply do not reflect the reality of what they experience. (http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/14/a_marine_s_afghan_aar_xii_technology_can_t_replace_being_there) These Marines are facing nasty surprises that could be around any corner or under any bush. With some vague similarity to Vietnam, the Marine with the IPOD is seeking some distracting relief from the lack of knowledge about what lies ahead or is developing behind. What is being reflected in this blog and the responses is the usually overlooked and unsought information about trial-and-error events that are absolutely critical to the effectiveness of the overall operation facing surprise. Unfortunately, as I argue in my work on cybered “security resilience” (Comfort, Boin, and Demchak, 2010 forthcoming, Designing Resilience, U Pitt Press), most security organizations do not collect this ground truth information in any systematic or easily absorbed way. Nor do the organization’s leaders see how new and even issued technologies could be adjusted to capture divergent experiences as possible different ideas of operation for whole organization. Imagine if those otherwise distracting handhelds could be used to input and test new ideas, a form of realistic “play it through” in high fidelity easily accessed (internet) and co-authored game-based simulations meant to uncover what has been overlooked and is being currently experienced.

What those Marines in this and the Jan 14th blog were sharing is called “tacit knowledge” for an organization. The past blog, and this blog is indirectly showing how that information so critical to the security resilience of an organization could be gathered. Here they are using IPODS but smart phones with extraordinary online access are becoming the norm. We have the technologies today to graphically show higher headquarters what happens when the technologies wrongly identify a goat slaughterer as a hostile murderer, or in this case when they are not encouraging useful collective sensemaking – or even stress reduction -- on the move. It is not just surveillance systems or often ignored AARs, but learning that is not being served by these dated technologies.

We need to continuously and permanently collect this tacit knowledge in easily given and absorbed ways, usually graphical by simulating ground truth. Organizations learn best and demonstrate more security resilience when their members can work through the complex consequences of choices, especially under uncertainty, and then use the results to adjust critical systems, processes, structures, or even mindsets. If we had such systems, Marines could have used their home-based or hand-held internet access, entered into an USMC or DoD-wide virtual “Atrium” environment, and captured their knowledge for everyone by adjusting realistic game-like simulations to reflect their experiences. Rather than writing a report or complaining on a blog, this generation raised on online games could have, in essence, played through an environment showing what they saw and chose to do, rather than what designers, force planners, or senior officers expected. This is called co-authoring, a powerful way to capture different knowledge in a game-based simulation across an organization. Imagine senior leaders seeing Marine after Marine changing the established but inaccurate game environment to show the real life shortcomings in technologies, techniques, or knowledge available. If the Marines are getting false information or being surprised due to being scared or bored, they and others can rescript the reality, play through what they experience, and powerfully show how the organization’s presumptions may not work in real terms on that tactical ground.

Furthermore, they could even then play through their own ideas on how to fix the situation, also captured for others to consider or incorporate. Imagine what could change if senior military leaders seeing scenario after scenario designed by boots on the ground in which even a mysteriously rapidly filled-in pothole proves to be newly laid IED not detected or prevented by any technology or on-site knowledge. Imagine what might happen if senior policymakers could then readily play through those scenarios themselves, as authored by their very junior individuals, to see the tactical reality through a different set of eyes, and then played them again with different policy choices up and down the chain of command. To develop security resilience given an increasingly complex and very surprising globe, the whole military organization needs to be able to capture, absorb, and act on those grounded trial-and-error lessons. We can use the technologies that are emerging seamlessly precisely because Marines, soldiers, airmen, and sailors from the online game generation are already preloaded to easily, virtually, and graphically share their experiences and new ideas in virtual, graphical, and recordable formats. It is not too much technology or too much latitude in using it, but too little of the right kind – the types of technologies that allow Marines to capture easily, globally, and permanently the hard lessons of ground truth they face and to experiment with the fixes they can envision. Survival and strategic success depend on using our comparative advantage in emerging technologies to learn easily, operationally, systematically, and continuously from the experiences of all our folk, no matter how junior or senior.

I live near one of the companies that trains service dogs for the blind and otherwise disabled. What some people don't realize is the people have to be trained almost as much as the dogs. One of their tools really surprised me.
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